To the memory of a formerly enslaved woman, freed by her mistress

[Roman marble funerary plaque]. A Roman marble funerary plaque inscribed for the freedwoman Quirinia Felicula.

€ 48.000,00

A tablet of marble engraved with five lines within a double-rule border, commemorating the dedication of a funerary urn to Quirina Felicula, who had been born a slave and was freed by her mistress. The plaque reads, in full: "Quiriniae [mulieris] l[ibertae] / Feliclae / ollam dat / C[aius] Valerius / Pylodamus", that is to say: "Gaius Valerius Pylodamus (= Philodamus?) dedicated this burial urn for the freedwoman Quirinia Felicla (= Felicula)".

Under Roman law, slaves had no personhood and enjoyed legal protection mainly as their master's property. They were paid a wage (peculium) which they could save up to buy themselves freedom. A slave who had been manumitted (freed, enfranchised) was a "libertus" (or "liberta") and a citizen, customarily taking the former owner's family name.

"Feliclae" is most likely the abbreviated form of "Feliculae", rather than a misspelling of "Feliciae"; the name "Pylodamus" is not attested and probably refers to "Philodamus" (or possibly "Polydamus"). The "retrograde c" found here after "Quiriniae" can stand for various words beginning with the letter c ("centurio", "Gaius"); it can also denote an unspecific placeholder praenomen rendered, in the case of women, either as "Gaia" ("Jane Doe") or, more commonly, as the abstract "mulier" - a usage well attested in Roman onomastic practice not only in epigraphy, but also in literary sources since the late years of the Republic.

The plaque would have been created in the earlier years of the rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, apparently coming from a Roman columbarium tomb discovered in the vineyard of the Clementine College, Rome, ca. 1733.